MMF: Publications | Building a Culture of Care in US Art Museums

Brea Heidelberg

Introduction

In response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, events that drew the attention of some who had previously had the privilege of ignorance, many organizations made public declarations of a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Art museums were among the many cultural institutions that began critically reflecting upon longstanding inequitable practices that impacted both internal and external community members. This often meant paying attention to those within the organization who were already engaged in this kind of work. Resources to encourage this type of reflection flowed from funders and museums invested in community engagement projects, interrogations of and updates to collections practices, internship programs, and internally focused committees designed to help diverse audiences and the workforce at all levels. Of those various initiatives, the public-facing ones––community engagement and collections practices––have received the most strategic and action-oriented consideration. Internship programs emerged, but the 2023 Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action has many organizations backtracking from investments in programs designed to help diversify the field. Even before that decision, internal equity work was receiving extensive pushback, also known as diversity resistance.¹ The result has been the harmful practice of fakequity, where organizations talk a lot about DEI work and change, but ultimately fall back on old, inequitable practices.

Through a field-wide data study focused on workplace equity and organizational culture in US art museums, Museum Moving Forward’s (MMF) 2023 report lays out the issues of fakequity in internal operations and its devastating impact on the field. The rich, albeit bleak, picture painted by participants’ responses to questions about workplace discrimination and harassment reflects the kind of experiences that have driven my research on identifying and eradicating inequities in the workplace. I am a Black cisgender and heterosexual woman who teaches arts administration in a university setting in addition to consulting with arts organizations on a variety of capacity-building and equity-building issues. Much of what I have come to know I have learned from first-hand experience navigating interconnected systems of oppression as a student, employee, academic, and mother. What I’ve seen in my own life and work, as well as what I have found researching and working with arts organizations, has led me to the conclusion that many of the problems caused by inequity and fakequity within the museum field could be mitigated and then eradicated by a shift in human resources (HR) practices from a hyperfocus on compliance to a commitment to care.

Many organizations focus their HR efforts on what they are legally obligated to do under federal, state, and local law. While this is certainly a necessary aspect of HR, diversity resistance is at play when organizations use the idea of compliance as a shield to protect themselves from having to consider how to actually care for employees. It is in this false dichotomy of compliance versus care where many of the report’s participating museums, and arguably most cultural organizations, reside. Within the results, especially those related to discrimination and harassment, organizations have much to learn about how HR practices can be structured to work with employees, instead of just protecting the organization from legal action.

I am making a purposeful distinction between HR as a department and HR practices because all employees serving in any managerial capacity engage in HR practices, even though many museum workers receive little to no training in how to manage people. The MMF report found that over half of respondents (59%) disagreed with the following statement: my institution provides management and/or leadership training for all supervisors.² In my personal experience as an arts manager and my work consulting with arts organizations, I have come across a few different types of managers who are creating harm among their direct and indirect reports:

• Managers who experienced psychological hazing common in most industries during their rise to traditional leadership positions. This most often means racism, sexism, homophobia, and a bias against working parents (especially mothers). These managers are aware that what they experienced was not right but have internalized some of these biases.

• Conflict avoidant managers who are not equipped to navigate the difficult conversations necessary to demonstrate care and effect equitable change. A special shout-out to the managers who are selectively conflict avoidant. They may have a lot to say to BIPOC, women, or LGBTQ subordinates, but are quiet when dealing with white men and women with positional power.

• Managers who are paralyzed by the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing, and so they say or do nothing.

• Managers who are resistant to change, generally, and diversity, specifically.

While some of these managers do not intend to cause harm, the impact is the same as those who do. An overreliance on compliance provides a convenient excuse for any of the aforementioned manager types to do nothing. To make the matter worse, managers who are actively trying to stop current harms and prevent future ones are often silenced by their managers who may fall into one of the above categories.

The Pre-Work

First, you cannot engage in meaningful equity work if you can’t afford to eat or pay your rent. Currently, many organizations are over-reliant on workers’ intrinsic motivation for engaging in museum work. This is often used as an excuse to not fully address pay inequities and socioeconomic biases. Some articulate the growing demand for increased pay as a generational shift, but I think it is simply a reasonable response to the significant increase in the cost of living that has occurred alongside the profound erosion of the social safety net that has been enjoyed by previous generations. People must be paid a living wage. Full stop. If the organization cannot afford to pay people a living wage, then the work needs to be reimagined to align with what the organization can afford. Providing reasonable healthcare options and flexible or part-time schedules that allow employees to supplement their income are ways to avoid compounding economic inequities while the organization determines long-term compensation strategies.

Knowledge of and compliance with federal legislation such as the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 is by no means bad, but it is simply not enough. As Hebl et al. eloquently stated, “modern forms of discrimination, although technically in accordance with federal legislation, have consequential outcomes on stigmatized individuals’ work, as well as their psychological and physical health.”³ Unfortunately, while the impact of inequitable behaviors may first appear localized, the impact can resound throughout individual careers, entire organizations, and the field.⁴ The MMF report provides a full and frankly grim depiction of this:

Art museum workers with experiences of discrimination are almost three times more likely to feel that they have to hide aspects of who they are at work (56% vs. 19%).

Workers who have experienced discrimination are more than twice as likely to say their workplace is negatively affecting their health (66% vs. 30%).⁵

More subtle and subversive forms of discrimination like selective incivility,⁶ interpersonal discrimination,⁷ and the relative inconsistency of how those behaviors manifest in daily organizational life⁸ create an environment where it is difficult to identify and address everyday occurrences of discrimination and harassment. However, knowledge of various forms of discrimination and harassment and how they can manifest in daily interactions, as well as both the individual-level and organizational-level impacts, are necessary to create an inclusive and equitable work environment.

When working with arts organizations, I typically conduct an organizational equity audit first. It is important to know the nuances of existing inequities. Findings from an audit can help organizations avoid ineptly adopting so-called “best practices” that are not necessary or appropriate. Aside from an organizational audit, one universal recommendation I make is a reading group for the white people in the organization that focuses on content curated to educate them about and facilitate discussion of white privilege. The purpose is to create the space for white people to grapple with how whiteness operates in society and in their organization, specifically. This is foundational to any other equity work, as white discomfort can be just as deadly to equity work as white rage. Organizations emerge much better equipped to tackle internal equity work in sustainable ways because they are equipped with the tools to have the necessary conversations.

Compliance vs. Care

MMF’s findings on discrimination and harassment is by far the biggest indictment of the museum field and an anguished call for change. In the glossary of terms, it was noted that the authors “did not define discriminating or harassing behavior, trusting participants to identify it based on their own lived experiences.”⁹ While this an understandable methodological choice, it likely resulted in participants sharing fewer accounts of discrimination or harassment due to ignorance, conditioning, and/or internalization. Given the aforementioned lack of training in HR practices, many people are not aware of what is considered discriminatory or what constitutes harassment. Organizations’ hyper-focus on compliance is compounded by the presumption that only overt discrimination or garish instances of harassment “count.” Even when behaviors might be identified as discrimination or harassment, field norms may lead it to be discounted (e.g., unpaid internships or abusive mentor/mentee relationships). Finally, individuals who have experienced discrimination throughout their lives, in the K-12 and higher education environments and throughout their career, may have internalized the behavior. When this occurs, individuals will subscribe to discriminatory beliefs about their own identities, potentially leading to the presumption that they “deserve” the discriminatory behavior in ways that may lead them to underreport it or forgo reporting it altogether.¹⁰ Despite these potential risks to the accuracy of reporting incidents of discrimination or harassment, “more than a quarter of art museum workers have experienced discrimination at their current institutions.”¹¹

Organizations need a more nuanced consideration of discrimination and harassment in the workplace that incorporates, but is not limited to, the technicalities of the law. In my consulting work, I have developed a spectrum: inconsiderate, inequitable, and illegal. Inconsiderate indicates behaviors that are generally considered rude, but the motive or impact of those behaviors is not readily identifiable as inequitable. Inequitable indicates behaviors that create an inequity. Illegal behaviors are those explicitly prohibited by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (collectively known as the EEOC laws). Below is an example of each category:

• Inconsiderate: consistently being interrupted or talked over in meetings

• Inequitable: being excluded from meetings about work under your purview

• Illegal: not being promoted (because you identify as a member of a protected class)

When I share this framing with clients, it helps them see the impact of escalating behaviors. In the moment, witnessing someone constantly being interrupted can be frustrating but may not feel like it has broader implications. Laid out like this, it is easier to see how someone who is constantly interrupted in meetings and unable to fully articulate their ideas can later be excluded from meetings altogether and might not be considered for a professional development opportunity, promotion, or award.

Reporting policies are a prime example of the difference between compliance versus care. If you file a complaint because you’ve experienced workplace harassment, organizations are required to provide you with information about the process for handling those claims. This includes any obligations that you, as the complainant, have to keep the process going.

Compliance: having an HR officer or a member of organizational leadership sit you down in an office and speak at you about the process.

Unfortunately, for many people, this information is being shared with a brain that has experienced trauma. Traumatized brains are less likely to retain information, especially specifics like deadlines or required documentation.

Care: providing you with an advocate and sharing policy and procedural information with both of you verbally and in writing.

Now the complainant has a neutral party to remind them of any important deadlines and requirements. This can help ensure that the complainant does not miss a deadline or form that could undermine their ability to have their concerns addressed.

A Crisis of Accountability

With a better understanding of the compounding impact of bias and discrimination that often hide in more subtle forms, organizations will be better equipped to address the crisis of accountability museum leaders are facing: “More than a quarter of museum workers have experienced discrimination at their current workplaces. A crisis in the systems of accountability is made evident by only half of workers reporting these experiences because they felt nothing will be done about them—a pattern consistent through every level of seniority.”¹²

Not holding people accountable for inequitable behaviors, regardless of where those behaviors fall on the inconsiderate, inequitable, illegal spectrum, creates a ripple of harm that far outlives the specific incident. For those who have experienced the harm, it sends the message that the organization either does not care about the behaviors or that it condones them. People unintentionally perpetuating harm remain ignorant of the impact of their actions. Worse, people who are aware of the harm they’ve caused receive the message that their actions are condoned, and the organization does not care about the person harmed. Unfortunately, the impact does not end there. People across the organization who are directly or indirectly aware of the harmful behavior and the harm receive the same message as the perpetrator. This creates an environment where people presume that harmful practices are simply a part of how works gets done. People who have not engaged in harmful practices in the past may begin doing so, and those who have are likely to escalate their bad behavior.

The inconsiderate, inequitable, illegal framing has helped organizations create policies that can account for and correct behaviors in the categories leading up to illegal, with the intention of stopping patterns of behavior before they reach that level. Using the example from above, the development of an accountability structure that incorporates care for those impacted can look like this:

This accountability structure builds upon itself so that the organization is:

• setting up the parameters for a psychologically safe workplace (organizational agreement/group agreement),

• reinforcing those parameters in ways that promote restorative action and allowing room for change and growth, and

• creating a paper trail in case the behaviors persist and the offending employee needs to be removed from the organization.

This structure is not punitive and provides space for individuals who do not intend harm while also accounting for those that do.

To create these type of accountability structures, museum leaders must become comfortable with transparency while they work to build organizational equity- and care-centered capacity. The history of leadership in museums champions charismatic leaders who emerge with fully formed policies and solutions.¹³ Despite more recent calls for collaborative leadership, what often occurs is a lot of performative activity meant to make employees feel heard prior to the implementation of policies and procedures that had already been determined before soliciting employee engagement. This practice does not respect nor reflect the time and energy employees invested. The report calls for “greater communication and transparency surrounding museum decision making.”¹⁴ This should include the work of museums assessing and revising policies and procedures related to HR and organizational culture as a form of care. Involving employees at all levels and in every type of employment or engagement within the organization can help mitigate the harm that has come from the lack of equitable and caring policies and procedures in the past. It will also help create ways of operating informed by the knowledge and lived experiences of individuals throughout the organization.

Conclusion

Whether it’s due to ignorance, weaponized incompetence, or malicious ineptitude, organizations must evolve past the hyperfocus on compliance. Informed and strategic incorporation of care and consideration into HR practices can mitigate and provide restorative action for harm that has already been done. Otherwise, organizations will continue loudly claiming DEI work, while quietly harming and silencing the very people they are congratulating themselves for helping. This is the white savior complex’s sneaky younger sibling, benevolent discrimination.

The bill for burnout culture and inequitable practices is coming due with “60% of arts museum workers…thinking about leaving their jobs, and 68%...considering leaving the field altogether.”¹⁵ Conversely, equitable and inclusive organizations are more efficient and effective. Organizations can reduce burnout and dysfunctional turnover while increasing creativity and productivity if they commit to building inclusive and equitable work environments. To do so, they must examine and alter decision-making practices, policies, and the formal and informal aspects of organizational operations.¹⁶ Cultural institutions simply cannot afford to fully realize the consequences of their current actions at a time when they rely more than ever on workers to essentially donate labor while they figure out how to diversify revenue streams to navigate inflation and shifting funding priorities. As was stated in the executive summary, “we must take better care of our people.”¹⁷

Endnotes

_{[1] Brea M. Heidelberg, “Artful avoidance: Initial considerations for measuring diversity resistance in cultural organizations,” in Diversity Resistance in Organizations, ed. Kecia M. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2020), 149–164.}

_{[2] Jen Benoit-Bryan, Diane Jean-Mary, and Mia Locks, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” Museums Moving Forward, 2023, 75, https://museumsmovingforward.com/data-studies/2023.}

_{[3] Mikki Hebl, Shannon K. Cheng, and Linnea C. Ng, “Modern Discrimination in Organizations,” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 7, no. 1 (January 2020): 258.}

_{[4] Brea M. Heidelberg, “Theorizing Street Cred: Exploring the Impact of Barriers to Entry and Advancement of (Hopeful) Black Arts Administrators,” in Arts Management, Cultural Policy, & the African Diaspora, ed. Antonio C. Cuyler (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022), 311–28.}

_{[5] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 74.}

_{[6] Lilia M. Cortina, “Unseen Injustice: Incivility as Modern Discrimination in Organizations,” Academy of Management Review 33, no. 1 (January 2008): 55–75.}

_{[7] Michelle R. Hebl, Jessica Bigazzi Foster, Laura M. Mannix, and John F. Dovidio, “Formal and Interpersonal Discrimination: A Field Study of Bias Toward Homosexual Applicants,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 6 (June 2002): 815–25.}

_{[8] Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio, “Understanding and Addressing Contemporary Racism: From Aversive Racism to the Common Ingroup Identity Model,” Journal of Social Issues 61 no. 3 (August 2005): 615–39.}

_{[9] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 13.}

_{[10] Henry A. Willis, Effua E. Sosoo, Dante L. Bernard, Aaron Neal, and Enrique W. Neblett, “The Associations Between Internalized Racism, Racial Identity, and Psychological Distress,” Emerging Adulthood 9, no. 4 (August 2021): 384–400.}

_{[11] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 68.}

_{[12] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 3.}

_{[13] Melissa Nisbett and Ben Walmsley, “The Romanticization of Charismatic Leadership in the Arts,” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 46, no. 1 (February 2016): 2–12.}

_{[14] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 18.}

_{[15] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 3.}

_{[16] Robin J. Ely and David A. Thomas, “Getting Serious About Diversity,” Harvard Business Review 98, no. 6 (November–December 2020): 114–22.}

_{[17] Benoit-Bryan, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” 3.}

Bibliography

Benoit-Bryan, Jen, Diane Jean-Mary, and Mia Locks. “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report.” Museums Moving Forward, 2023. https://museumsmovingforward.com/data-studies/2023.

Cortina, Lilia M. “Unseen Injustice: Incivility as Modern Discrimination in Organizations.” Academy of Management Review 33, no. 1 (January 2008): 55–75.

Ely, Robin J., and David A. Thomas. “Getting Serious About Diversity.” Harvard Business Review 98, no. 6 (November–December 2020): 114–22.

Gaertner, Samuel L., and John F. Dovidio. “Understanding and Addressing Contemporary Racism: From Aversive Racism to the Common Ingroup Identity Model.” Journal of Social Issues 61 no. 3 (August 2005): 615–39.

Hebl, Mikki, Shannon K. Cheng, and Linnea C. Ng. “Modern Discrimination in Organizations.” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 7, no. 1 (January 2020): 257–82.

Hebl, Michelle R., Jessica Bigazzi Foster, Laura M. Mannix, and John F. Dovidio. “Formal and Interpersonal Discrimination: A Field Study of Bias Toward Homosexual Applicants.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 6 (June 2002): 815–25.

Heidelberg, Brea M. “Artful avoidance: Initial considerations for measuring diversity resistance in cultural organizations.” In Diversity Resistance in Organizations, edited by Kecia M. Thomas, 149–164. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Heidelberg, Brea M. “Theorizing Street Cred: Exploring the Impact of Barriers to Entry and Advancement of (Hopeful) Black Arts Administrators.” In Arts Management, Cultural Policy, & the African Diaspora, edited by Antonio C. Cuyler, 311–28. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022.

Koltonski, Daniel. “Vocations, Exploitation, and Professions in a Market Economy.” Social Theory and Practice 44, no. 3 (July 2018): 323–47.

Nisbett, Melissa, and Ben Walmsley. “The Romanticization of Charismatic Leadership in the Arts.” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 46, no. 1 (February 2016): 2–12.

Willis, Henry A., Effua E. Sosoo, Dante L. Bernard, Aaron Neal, and Enrique W. Neblett. “The Associations Between Internalized Racism, Racial Identity, and Psychological Distress.” Emerging Adulthood 9, no. 4 (August 2021): 384–400.